I stay at a variety of MI brands (CY, SHS, Mar, Ren, and FF). In just about all cases my response time varies depending on the time of day. For me since it is generally business locations, I typically find early to mid evening the slowest response time (e.g. business folks catching up on email and other home office matters). When I work in the hotel during the morning, that is generally faster. So I would agree that bandwidth appears to be an issue.

The other pattern I have noticed is properties that use DSL with external DSL modems in the rooms tend to have the most general connectivity/reliability issues. Sites that have wireless and/or traditional wired Ethernet work better. In general I have seen reliability improve over the past year. Late 2003/Early 2004 I can remember asking to have my room changed more than once due to broken Internet. Didn't have to ask once the remainder of last year or the beginning of this year. I do agree that when I do have to ask, the hotel staff is pretty useless. If the remote support line people from the ISP can't fix it, the solution has almost always been to change rooms. Once in a while, the hotel has someone who knows how to reset the CPE equipment at the hotel.

Overall, even though the response time is rarely as good as my home boradband connection, it still beats the h*** out of dialup. Price is right at limited services properties (FI, RI, CY, SHS). The wired for busines is an okay deal for me at full service properties since I also take advantage of the free long distance calls. Saves a lot of time on my cell phone minute allocation for the month. Bottom line, generally works well for me and Highspeed Internet access is must for me when selecting a property.

--Jon